These days we are used to League Cup games being charged at £10 and £20 a ticket, with discounts for juniors and seniors, but it was not always so. In fact it was the low crowd on this day in 2001 for the league cup match which convinced the club that it needed radical action. Of course the media ignored the move and continued to complain about high prices at Arsenal despite making Arsenal’s league cup games, not just matches anyone could afford but at this time the cheapest at any Premier League ground. Sadly when Arsenal made it to the final, the Football League didn’t continue the gesture.
Here are the anniversaries…
27 November 1877: Leigh Roose, one of the most famous players of the age, and an Arsenal player at the end of his career, was born. Leigh was the player who was singled out from Arsenal’s first world war heros at the Remembrance Ceremony before the Arsenal Tottenham game in November 2016.
27 November 1909. Bury 1 Woolwich Arsenal 2. After just two wins in the first 14 Arsenal were bottom of the league. With this and two subsequent wins the club rose to 15th after the 11 December game, leaving Bolton and Tottenham stranded.
27 November 1915: 2,500 turned up for QPR 1 Arsenal 1 – Arsenal’s third draw of the month. With Parliament now sitting on Saturdays legislation was introduced to control housing rents and maintain them at their pre-war level following a series of rent strikes in Glasgow which had often led to civil disorder and wholesale eviction by landlords.
27 November 1938: Racing Club de Paris 1 Arsenal 1. The landing of the planes going to France for the Remembrance match was affected by fog. The two planes carrying the Arsenal players missed each other and one went on to miss a hanger by a matter of feet.
27 November 1943: Arsenal 6 Charlton 2 in the Football League South wartime league. The result meant Arsenal had scored 17 goals in three consecutive games, with Lewis getting seven and Dennis Compton four.
27 November 1971: After four defeats in a row the result was Arsenal 2 Crystal Palace 1, with 32,461 in attendance, and the win brought much relief. Arsenal were two up in 35 minutes as Radford volleyed the second in from an Armstrong corner. But Palace responded and nearly got a draw – it was not looking good.
27 November 1972: Henry White (known as “Bert”) died. After playing 101 league games for Arsenal scoring 40 goals, between 1919 and 1923, and being a member of the London Challenge Cup winning side of 1922, he moved on to Blackpool, and also played first class cricket for Warwickshire. See also this second article.
27 November 1984: Martin Hayes first game – a friendly v Australia at Highbury. He had joined Arsenal as an apprentice in June 1982.
27 November 1996: Arsenal 2 Liverpool 4 (League cup round 4). In three league cup games Arsenal scored eight goals, of which five were scored by Ian Wright.
27 November 2000: Sebastian Svard bought in from Kjobenhavns Boklklub. He did not play a league game for Arsenal but won the Youth Cup and after a series of loans went on to play for Borussia Mönchengladbach.
27 November 2001: Only 16,917 turn up for Arsenal v Grimsby in the league cup, although 3rd division Grimsby had just knocked out Liverpool. Edu and Wiltord scored. This low crowd influenced the decision to offer League Cup games for £10 (lower) and £20 (upper) from then on.
27 November 2002: Roma 1 Arsenal 3, Henry’s first European hat trick.
27 November 2007: Arsenal lost 3-1 to Seville and thus ended a 28 games unbeaten sequence.
